Flaubert and Don Quijote »

This book tells the story of how Flaubert's admiration for Cervantes' Don Quijote unfolded, and how profoundly it shaped and influenced the writer's approach to all his major works, beginning with his breakthrough novel Madame Bovary. Several cultural and personal factors converged to establish the prominent place of Don Quijote in Flaubert's imagination, but it is the profound parallels between the two novels that clearly illustrate how Don Quijote permeates Madame Bovary in both subject and approach. One such parallel is Alonso Quijano and Emma Bovary's desire to imitate fiction, which reflects a kind of literary madness in which the attempt to impose the narrative conventions of romances on life only leads hero and heroine, respectively, to destruction, disappointment, and ultimately death. Soledad Fox's study situates each author in his respective historical and aesthetic context, and provides key examples of how the French author penetrated deeply into Cervantes' novelistic approach and how his relationship to Don Quijote directly shaped his success at the crux of his career.

List of Illustrations

I Cervantes in Context 1

II Don Quijote: A Selective Genealogy 19

III A Self-Conscious Author 32

IV Readers and Books 45

V A Prosaic Education 75

VI Madame Bovary and Don Quijote 125

Notes 174

Bibliography 186

Index 190